Synopsis

It's senior year, and Rica is seriously stressed out. She's got more homework, exams, and papers than she can handle, and was recently dumped by her boyfriend. In other words: Life sucks! One day, she's chatting online when she meets three classmates who hate school as much as she does. Together, they hatch a plan to blow up the school when no one is present. The countdown is on for X-Day ... (Source: Tokyopop)

Story: 8/10
4 persons (3 students and a teacher) meet in the school chat room. They all blame the school as the source of their problems, so they decide to blow it up. As the characters get to know each other, they begin to realize that their problems are situated in other aspects of life as well, not just from the school. They start to help each other to deal with the problems.
'Loneliness' is a very important part of the story.

Art: 9/10
The art fits the serious theme; no chibis, no overdrawn gestures or expressions.
Sometimes you can feel the characters suffering because of looking at the pictures. Sometimes there may be a lack of backgrounds, but sometimes it just fits the scene. A small amount of panels also contain just 'screenshots' from the online conversation, but that's okay, because it may give you the feeling of a 'real online conversation' and how else would you be able to tell the reader what they're writing there?

Character: 10/10
All characters have their very own problems which makes them rather unique and special.
Jangalian, a grumpy biolgy teacher, is stalked by his boss's daughter and annoed by his students.
11 is overstrained by her life; she was dumped by her boyfriend, who took a younger girl, who starts beating 11 at everything she was good at.
Mr. Money is abused by his mother and she blames him for all her problems. Therefore, he's afraid of women.
Polaris is very shy and silent... as long she has to wear her school uniform. As soon as she dresses as a gothic lolita, she's a totally different person.

Enjoyment: 9/10
The manga is nothing for those, who search for some happy-go-lucky-mangas with cheerful characters and a world full of joy. it's the exact opposite. It shows four normal persons, who can't deal with their problems anymore. The main problem is something everybody knows:
Loneliness.
I enjoyed this manga very much, because it was deep and I guess everybody felt already like some of the characters already.

Overall: 9/10
It's an awesome manga with elements of psycho and a bit of romance. It shows how your problems can bring you down and your friends can build you up...
And that's blowing up the cause of your problem isn't always the only solution. read more

Rika, Saginuma (the protagonist) goes to highschool with a smile on her face, she gets good grades, she has a bunch of friends and the year before she got second place in the inter-highschool championships of track-and-field but she quit and she's single.

School life at its best, no?

Behind that plastic smile, Rika, Saginuma is morose. Her ex-boyfriend had moved on, dating the up and coming track-and-field star of the school; Rika watches from afar, as her boyfriend's relationship deepens with his new girlfriend and as the girlfriend, slowly gets better and better at track-and-field until; maybe... she'll be better than Rika...? But what is Rika worrying about, she quit track-and-field hadn't she...?

All these thoughts eat away at the protagonist, her smile never moving, her eyes though remain untouched by it, staring at her bleak surroundings; cold and hollow.

On a whim, Rika joins a chatroom and sees people complaining about the school, she typed a careless remark, a forbidden illogical desire: 'I wish this place called school would just disappear'.

Something everyone and I mean EVERYONE has thought of once in their lives. Not technically school: a person, a place, an object, yourself; everyone at one point in their lives has wanted something to disappear.
But most of the time, nothing really happens.

But someone actually took it literally:

'That sounds good. Should we get rid of it, then?'.

I liked the idea, I thought it was an interesting story though the outcome was far from the one I hoped (I can't even say expected) but it had an okay ending. The characters were, I must say, pretty random but realistic randomness, if you get what I mean. And if you don't I totally understand.

Anyway, what I got out of the story was: life stinks but try not to act like a maniac when you hit bottom.

The art was okay, it didn't have many details, forget that, it didn't have REAL detail. Sure you can tell the difference between doors and people but come one! If you couldn't, you'd have some retarded eyes or the illustrations were some really weird crap. I'm not talking about outlines, I'm talking about REAL DETAIL. Shading, shadows and the likes. Which this story definitely doesn't have. Proportion was average except for those eyes. Those really weird, creepy, I mean seriously, creepy eyes. If I woke up one morning to find my eyes looking like one of E.T.s friends; I'd have a heart attack then and there.

Realism was something the illustrator seemed to have forgotten about while drawing the art.

I do recommend this, it was a mellow read. It wasn't earth-shattering nor was it a kind of otherworldly revelation, it was a story with a nice idea.read more

I kind of got this manga on a whim, after reading some of the reviews.
WOW! I started reading this just for a little before I went to bed, and ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting - very unusual for me now as I tend to fall asleep easier than I did 20 years ago (yes, I'm old). But it definetly says something that I actually turned out the light, then turned it back on, walked over to the shelf and pulled Volume two off because I HAD HAD HAD to know what happened.

The story and characters in this story are outstanding - you really get a feel for the angst and pressures of school years, and the wavering quality of these times. And the emotions never feel forced or fake.

I went into this manga thinking the protagonists would be bad, but you never feel that they are evil/bad/wrong. Misguided yes - but you also really feel like they are trapped.
I especially liked the emotional quality of MR Money - the conflicting, contradictory events in his life are a source of puzzlement, but the rationalizations he uses hit close to what I have seen in real life. And the teacher without a true goal or purpose hits closer to home - as I get older I sometimes feel like that.

The art in good, it doesn't add or detract anything in particular. It goes between detailed and austere as the scene calls for it.

Enjoyment was high, pure drama, very thought-provoking. This manga earned a permenant spot on my shelf : ~ )read more

Story:
X-Day is about a group of kids who meet online in a forum. They talk about how much school sucks and how much they cant wait to get out and into the real world, much like kids do in the real world. When a girl under the username 11 says how she wishes school would just disappear another person under the username Polaris comes up with an insane plan...to blow up the school! 11, Polaris along with two other people from the chat room come together in order to plan the actual blowing up of the school.

Okay so I will admit, the actual story is a little strange but, the way the story was written is amazing. The author writes the story in a way that is believable and less crazy than it sounds.

Art:6

One of the weaker points but, it is not as bad as some. The details are really outstanding.

Characters:10

This was my favorite part because, you could feel their pain. The way they felt was completely understandable. The feeling of frustration and anxiousness the characters felt was very relatable. The feeling of depression even though you were giving an almost perfect life. Mostly the feeling like the world was closing in on you and the idea of suicide was there but you knew you could never do it. You could really understand the characters motives

Enjoyment:8
I really enjoyed the story

Overall:8

The story was really intriguing and the characters were very relatable even though the art work wasn't as great as it could have been.